Enfield, North Carolina — a small rural town with big clean-energy dreams — just passed a key milestone on its quest to lower costs and strengthen resilience.
A seed grant of nearly $300,000 will jump-start a neighborhood form of geothermal energy that can heat, cool, and provide hot water to households.
If the nonprofit that secured the money, Enfield Energy Futures, can raise the rest of the $5 million it needs for the pilot project, the town’s electric utility could become the first in the Southeast to deploy this kind of technology, joining a small but growing number that are following the lead of Eversource Energy in Framingham, Massachusetts.
“The community is super bought into the idea that we are looking beyond dirty energy,” said Mondale Robinson, the 46-year-old mayor of this town about 30 miles south of the Virginia border, one of the poorest and Blackest in America.
Since late 2023, Robinson and the team who formed the Enfield nonprofit have been holding town hall meetings to vet and refine their ambitious goals for low-cost energy independence. Their plans include a town-run solar farm, a weatherization hub to help residents access grants for insulating their homes and upgrading appliances, and a revamp of the town’s dilapidated grid, which suffers frequent outages.
